V8 Conversions

Comments

The Bavaria is my least favorite BMW of all time (as if you couldn't guess). I don't know what they were thinking. I mean, they also made a 1600, 2002 and 2800CS, so it's not like they didn't know how to make a good car. It's a Bavarian Buick, in the worst sense of the word.

A more logical V8 conversion would be a 735i, except that the M30 motor in that car was probably the best engine they ever made.

I would personally come to your house and dissolve you in a vat of hand lotion if you messed up a pre-war 328.

I just threw that out there to see what kind of apoplexy I could stir up in you.

20 PSI of boost? Isn't that asking for KA-BOOM? I trust he's not doing that for long, or up a steep hill. Maybe a big C clamp on the cylinder head?

The motor's built to take up to 24. I saw it during the build, and it's a work of art which made my boosted E36 look like a hot-rodded Isetta. We're talking forged crank, custom rods and pistons, head studs, 8:1 compression, custom equal length header into the turbo, dual staged injectors for each cylinder, with an aftermarket brain (which allows an "around town" setting with only 12 psi). Your basic "more money than sense" $40,000 build. That's not counting the cooling system, driveline and suspension work, and dyno tuning time. Oh yeah, 700+ at the wheels. My friend drove it and said he absent mindedly rolled into the throttle in 3rd at about 40 MPH. Next thing he knew he was sideways. It's a total sleeper too. But not the way I'd spend my money.

The Bavaria's running some kind of Eibach spring/Koni shock combo. He's gusetted the unit body in a few places, and it's got brakes from an E32 7 series. Nice job. Another sleeper.

So he got SERIOUS about the engine rebuild. Yep that's what you'd have to do. But 12 psi sounds like where you'd want to be most of the time. I have heard from engine builders that 20+ psi for 15 seconds would destroy just about any engine.

The nice thing (among some of the not nice things) about an American V8 conversion is that the power is SO CHEAP. You can buy 500++HP for $5,000, or even less in some circumstances. And maybe...what...another $1,500 for aftermarket fuel injection management, if you don't want to go with carburetion?

On the minus side, you can end up with a nose-heavy noisy brute which makes for a fun, but generally short-lived, sense of pleasure soon turning to annoyance.

To my mind, less is more with a V8 conversion that you plan to drive, not race.

mike--don't ever post your e-mail in a public forum---you'll probably get spammed from search engines who crawl for these address. I'm going to remove your post to protect your privacy and you can contact 800sl by clicking on his profile name in the header of any of his posts, or if his e-mail is not public in his profile, just post here and ask him to click on your profile name to get your e-mail.